. >> previously, you mentioned the surprised that mitt romney chose paul ryan as a running mate. who did you think he would pick? >> good question. i thought tim pawlenty. running in these national races is really hard. i remember the day that -- we were leaving denver after the convention and we learned that, on the airplane, mccain had chosen sarah palin. so went to the front of the airplane to senator obama and senator biden had been newly selected as his running mate. he said i think i am reasonably smart. it took me like six months to figure out how to be a presidential candidate, how to deal with the stop light, how to -- the spotlight, how to deal with the national politics. she may be the smartest politician ever and she may be able to come out of alaska to handle all of this. but i will give her three weeks. three weeks to the day, she did her interview with katie couric, which effectively ended it for her. [laughter] i thought that they might make a conservative choice, someone who had at least a taste of the national stage or, which was more of a consensus in the polit